SCIENCE 



A WEEKLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE, PUBLISHING THE 



OFFICIAL NOTICES AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 



FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE. 



Friday, October 26, 1906. 



CONTENTS. 



The Technical School and the University: 

 Professor Wiixiam H. Burr 513 



The American Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science: — 

 Section I — Economic and Social Science: 

 Db. John Franklin Crowell 519 



Scientific Books: — 



Whitford on the Vegetation of the Lamao 

 Forest Reserve : Professor Forrest Shreve 529 



Scientifi.c Journals and Articles 530 



Societies and Academies: — 



The St. Louis Chemical Society: C. J. 

 Borgmeyer. The Elisha Mitchell Scien- 

 tific Society of the University of North 

 Carolina 530 



Discussion and Correspondence: — 



' An Ignored Theory of the Ice Age ' : Pro- 

 fessor T. C. Chamberlin. Correspondence 

 relating to the Survey of the Coal Fields 

 of Arkansas: Professor J. C. Bbanner. 

 The Presidency of the Massachusetts Insti- 

 tute of Technology : Professor J. McKeen 

 Cattell 531 



Special Articles: — 



A Simple Method of illustrating Uniform 

 Acceleration: Professor A. Wilmer Duff 538 



Current Notes on Meteorology : — 



Meteorology of the Nile Basin; Cold Waves 

 in the ITnited States; Climate of Alaska; 

 Colorado College Observatory; Notes: Pro- 

 fessor R. DeC. Ward 639 



Research Laboratory of Physical Chemistry 

 of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology 540 



The Perkin Library 540 



Scientific Notes and News 541 



University and Educational News 544 



MSS. intended for publication and books, etc., intended for 

 review should be sent to the Editor of Science, Garrison-on- 

 Hudson, K. Y. 



THE TECHNICAL SCHOOL AND THE 

 UNIVERSITY. 



During the past four hundred years 

 there has been a most significant although 

 gradual development in the university or- 

 ganization. This has been a necessary 

 result of the evolution of ^ knowledge. The 

 earliest continental universities found a 

 reason for their being in the dissemination 

 of a system of scholastic learning which 

 had little to do with the affairs of men. 

 A body of learning based chiefly if not 

 wholly upon certain conventional systems 

 of abstract knowledge like the Aristotelian 

 logic, transmitted with little or no change 

 from the masters of antiquity, constituted 

 essentially all they had to offer to their 

 students. The instruction consisted al- 

 most entirely of certain exercises in this 

 intellectual inheritance practically un- 

 changed through the centuries of its trans- 

 mission. This mental training had essen- 

 tially no relation to or bearing upon the 

 actual things of human experience, nor 

 had it much effect upon national life or 

 upon any of the varied interests of the 

 community. 



In the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, however, when the dark shadows of 

 the middle ages began to disappear before 

 the illuminating influence of a truer knowl- 

 edge, a remarkable movement began in a 

 contest which has scarcely been closed to 

 this day. The intense struggle between 

 humanism and scholasticism began in and 

 around the German universities in the 

 early years of the sixteenth century. The 



